Part 2

Two duffle bags so full they looked like their zippers might burst sat in the corner of Matt's hospital room. They had appeared one afternoon after Matt woke up from a boredom-induced nap. Janice had left a note on his side table, but had not bothered to wake him up for something as trivial as giving him his clothes.

The note said, The rest of your stuff is in a storage unit on Johnston Street. I've paid it through til the end of the month, after that, it's on you to do something with it.

Beside the note was a key to the storage place. The owner's number was taped to it.

At first, no one said anything about them, but since Matt had no where to go and no one to take them off his hands, they continued to sit there well past a couple of days. Finally, the head nurse came in and explained that the bags would have to go.

"I have no one to take them," Matt told her. "My wife just threw me out." The woman looked sad, expressed her sympathies and left. She didn't say anything else about them after that, and neither did anyone else. The bags just sat there like white elephants in the corner of the room.

Not even Dr. Suresh or Molly said anything about them after the first day. Molly had bounced into the room, seen the bags and asked if Matt was getting out soon.

"Not yet, kiddo," Matt had assured her and added that his wife had brought them so he could have some comforts of home. Bitterly, he realized that Dr. Suresh would not be so easily convinced. The Indian man raised one perfectly exotic eyebrow at him and said nothing. His thoughts, before Matt closed off his mind as best he could, betrayed the inevitable truth.

And thus it was that, a week later, they still sat there collecting dust while Matt listened to Molly talk about something she had seen on television – a movie about a teenage age girl who suddenly discovers she's a princess.

"I think it would be neat to be a princess," she told them both. "Don't you, Mohinder?" she asked, and then wrinkled her nose. "You can't be a princess. You're a boy. You and Matt can be princes instead."

Dr. Suresh smiled and so did Matt. He couldn't help it, really; the little girl was so adorable and sweet. He would have loved to have a daughter like her someday. Not that he saw that happening any time soon, now that the ink had dried on the divorce papers and Janice was busy erasing all traces of him from her life.

"Molly," Dr. Suresh asked, suddenly, in his cultured patient way, "Would you be a dear and refill Matthew's water?"

Molly hesitated, looking from one to the other, and then nodded. She reached for the Pepto Bismal

pink water pitcher and skipped out of the room to fill it with ice and fresh water. At the door, she twiddled her fingers 'good-bye' and was gone. Matt couldn't help but think back to the day he first met her and how different she seemed from that day.

"She likes you," the other man was saying as they both turned their eyes away from the door. "More importantly, Matthew, she trusts you." For Molly to have gone through everything she has and still trust someone, that says a great deal about this man.

Matt heard the words in his head despite his best efforts to block them. He figured that Dr. Suresh had a very strong, passionate mind, because sometimes the things he thought just leaked through, no matter what.

He nodded. "She's a really special little girl," he said with an affectionate smile.

"She calls you her savior."

Matt nodded. "I was there when Sylar killed her family. I found her... hiding inside a wall. For a while, the cops watching her couldn't get her to listen to anyone but me."

Now it was Mohinder's turn to nod, thoughtfully. "Today, she asked me where you would go when you left the hospital. Those..." He indicated to the bags in the corner. "...have her worried that you have no place to live."

"I don't," Matt replied, the two words hurting him as much as the divorce itself had.

"I thought as much; I'm sorry."

Matt shrugged. "Don't be. It's not your problem. My wife and I -- " he shook his head, not really sure why it felt 'normal' to talk to this man like this. A stranger he'd only known for these days he'd been in the hospital. "I guess I should have seen it coming. We'd been having problems on and off for a while. I guess now it's just ... off."

Dr. Suresh looked sympathetic and for a moment – a silent moment in which the other man's thoughts were thankfully in another language – neither of them spoke. Matt focused on the sounds coming from outside the room – the footsteps, the low voices, the random thoughts of 'what a cute little girl' coming from the nurses who passed Molly in the hallway.

Finally, he turned to his companion and said, point blank, "You had a reason for bringing all this up, didn't you?"

"I did. Molly expects you to move in with us once you are released."

Matt choked on the air in his lungs and coughed. "What!?" He could scarcely believe what he was hearing and had no idea what would have prompted it.

"As I said before, Matthew – she likes you."

"I like her, too, but," Matt began to protest, but Mohinder was talking again.

"Molly trusts you, Matthew. She's all alone in this world and for whatever reason, she's adopted you into her life just as she has done with me. If you've no other place to go, why not come home with us? It could be as temporary as you wish."

Matt opened his mouth to answer, totally unsure of what answer would actually come out when he spoke, and the door swung open. Molly and a nurse entered, the nurse carrying the water pitcher while Molly held a purple ice pop in her hand.

"The nurse says she needs Matt for a while," Molly announced, holding the popsicle out to Dr. Suresh. "Want a taste, Mohinder?"

"No, thank you, sweetheart," Mohinder said, warily, and stood up to leave. "Why don't we go now. We can go to the park." When they reached the door, Mohinder turned and looked pointedly at Matt. "Think about what I said," he said quietly.

"I will," Matt found himself promising. He didn't know Dr. Suresh at all and Molly was just a little he'd saved while doing his job, but having them here on a regular basis had become the one thing he looked forward to each day.

It would be nice to have a home to go to. Even a temporary one.